


The End of All Things

by cptxrogers



Series: Stony bingo fills [3]
Category: Marvel 616
Genre: Angst, Avengers Vol. 5 (2013), Death, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Multimedia, not the happy kind of fix-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-15 12:03:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10556000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cptxrogers/pseuds/cptxrogers
Summary: At the culmination of the incursions, Steve and Tony watch the end of the world together.A multimedia re-telling ofTime Runs Out.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I mostly really liked Hickman’s Avengers run, but I found the ending disappointing. After all the build up of Steve and Tony’s relationship, I wanted more emotional closure for the end of the 616. So I decided to re-write my own version of _Time Runs Out_.
> 
> This diverges from canon around the time of _Original Sin_. The incursions are still happening and Steve remembers the mindwipe, but I got rid of the 8 month jump. Tony isn’t evil, Steve isn’t old. 
> 
> This is how I would say farewell to the 616 if it were up to me.
> 
> For my stony bingo square “The End”.

 

Tony’s machinations and his betrayal. Steve’s righteousness and his surety. All irrelevant now as the end approaches. Divisions and disagreements are swept aside in the face of the immutable certainty of death. **  
**

But pain doesn’t care if it is relevant, or if it is wanted. It just is. Steve feels agony blooming in his chest, scars rent open once more every time he looks at Tony. For reaching into his mind, pulling out the memories and with them his sense of trust, of place, of certainty. Leaving only the cold horror of the stranger wearing his best friend’s face.

Fury lances through him at the realizations that for all the wrongs they inflicted on each other, nothing has been achieved. The world still crumbles. The people still die.

No rescue, no reprieve.

_This is the way the world ends_

 

 

Memories, jostling to the fore of awareness, overwhelming in their intensity. A shared memory: a rescue on a rooftop. Plumes of smoke pouring from the window of a cheap hotel. Tony craving destruction, Steve dragging him towards the light. Demons that seemed easier to fight when they were external: the bottle, the villain, the corrupt government. Before the demons grew inside them and between them.

It seemed only right; Tony had found Steve in the ice and thawed him out and filled him with hope. Now Steve gave that hope back, held Tony tight and tried to infuse it into his bones.

A fall from grace, a finding of purpose.

 

 

Another time, another place. New beginnings. The rebuilding of a family. Two beings, not halves of a whole, but shapes which fit perfectly, forming a unit which is greater than the sum of its parts. Teaching the new Avengers, showing them how to work as a team. Ironic, considering the history between the two of them.

This is where they were always best. Leading others, nurturing their growth, letting them develop. In the hope that the next generation of heroes might do better, might be better, might not constantly fall apart and break and cut each other to the quick on their sharp fragments.

 

 

Wake up. Eyes on the horizon.

A painful moment of clarity.

See the naked cruelty, feel the knife twist of betrayal. Avert your gaze from the horror of the truth.

 

 

At some point, they find some kind of stability, some kind of peace. Together they forge a family with their own bare hands. Each of them had found their life ripped away, by war and the ravages of time, or by shrapnel and the inevitable creep of death. They move beyond who they were, try to find who they might be. Beneath the wheezing asthmatic lungs there is power to move the world, and beneath the ravaged husk of a heart there is boundless compassion.

With each tender, broken person they add to their team, they become stronger. Their cracks and their faults bleed into one another and over one another until they are unified in their pain, and in their determination. They will make the world better by the power of their belief.

It is never clear, this path to betterment that they walk, and it is never easy. But it is easier with company.

 

 

Always this anger between them though. Decades spent battling monsters have taught them to communicate with harsh blows and sharp words. Too much anger, too much resentment, too much feeling.

No space for either of them to live alone. They are drawn together so that they might consume one another, over and over. For all of their assurances that this time it will be different, it never is.

The ugly clank of shield against armor echoes through their memories.

 

 

Forgiveness is a stable reflex for them. Their relationship like an old elastic band: pulled apart, snapping back together. But each separation leaving a fracture, a point of weakness. Each time, their bond scarred a little more.

Maybe one day there will be a fracture which snaps the bond for good. Maybe this is it. The invasion of a mind, the vicious tearing of self, the casual arrogance which assumes that _forget_ is as good as _forgive_. Tony reached into Steve’s mind, and he erased the memories as if that would erase his sins.

Steve understands the value of forgiveness, but he wants no part of it.

 

 

Another memory, leading a cascade of memories: Tony lying motionless on the floor before him. Again and again, Tony sacrificing himself a hundred different ways, always ready to destroy himself in the service of others. His terrifying stillness a testament to Steve’s failure to save him. To save them both.

Steve can save bystanders and civilians, but never those closest to him. Never Tony, all hard edges and hard eyes and insistence that he doesn’t need saving. Tend to the others first. He’ll be fine.

It has always been easier to die for each other than to live.

 

 

They’ve been here before. Sparking fury, pummeling fists, emotions wrought with every clang of shield against armor. Pain tempered to a fine point by repeated blows. An empty space spreading like a chasm between them, filled with hurt and grief and pure intentions.

Freedom and security.  
Solidity and flexibility.  
The old and the new.

There has always been the balance, until the scales are tipped, until the weight of responsibility comes crashing down on them both.

They are here again once more. But now the land is dead and the sky is dying.

_This is the way the world ends_

 

 

Passing now into death’s twilight kingdom. The stars fall, the atmosphere boils, the uncanny looming presence of an invading earth hanging above them. A kind of sick peace descends with the realization that their struggle is over, that there is no enemy to fight. There is only the blackness seeping in from the edges of the horizon.

Lights flicker, reality bends. As the incursion warps the space surrounding two planets, energy crackles and hisses in lightning arcs which shoot violently across the sky.

Steve finds himself thinking that this is apt, somehow. That he and Tony are here together, watching the destruction of all things. Amidst the lies, and the betrayals, and the battles between them, there has always been one constant - their presence in each other’s lives, a gossamer thread of connection stretched between them and inevitably leading them back to each other.

It is right and fitting that they should end this way, friendship marred by the pain and mistrust still sparking between them. No catharsis, no resolution, no neat ending for the messy, complicated agony of being.

They pass from this life as they lived it, with the other at their side.

_This is the way the world ends  
Not with a bang but a whimper._

 

 

 

It started with two men.  
It ended with only darkness.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The lines of poetry are from _The Hollow Men_ by T.S. Eliot.
> 
> If you'd like to share this story, it has a tumblr post [here](http://cptxrogers.tumblr.com/post/159272249934/the-end-of-all-things).


End file.
